Evolution = Capitalism?

Glen Sanford

Whether he means to or not, Rucker makes a pretty profound choice by making chips the currency in Bopper free market anarchy. In doing so he makes a direct correlation between a Bopper's wealth and his/her/its ability to reproduce him/her/itself. I find this very interesting, as a premise like this can only have been written in a free market/capitalist society.

If you think about it for too long, it begins to seem strange that to reproduce one has to amass currency. What would society here be like if in order to have kids or to stay alive one had to have a certain income. This is already true to a degree, but what if such a thing were absolutely legally true? I find the idea somewhat disturbing.

It also doesn't sound like true anarchy to me. It just sounds like ultra-capitalism.

I wonder what would have happened if instead of anarchy/capitalism, the Boppers developed into a collectivist/socialist society. Perhaps this is what the Big-Boppers were trying to do: in merging as many minds as possible into the same hardware they were creating Socialism in its ultimate expression.


[To other discussions of Rudy Rucker's - Ware trilogy (Software, Wetware, and Freeware) by members of English 111, Cyberspace and Critical Theory, Spring 1998.]